


Ready for Our Dance?

by AndallitsGlory



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), M/M, Scarlet Witch Hallucination, Steve Rogers Feels, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 11:01:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4832930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndallitsGlory/pseuds/AndallitsGlory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A take on Steve Rogers' hallucination in Age of Ultron--what if Bucky had been in the dance hall instead? Very subtle, implied Stucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ready for Our Dance?

The band played a jaunty tune, but the notes hit so loud that they seemed more like assault on Steve’s ears. He picked his way through the ballroom, too red, dunking the blinding flashes of cameras. He had never seen so many cameras in his life, except at PR events. But all the people around him, their smiles with too many teeth, their laughter filled with too much hysteria, leaned into the lenses as if starving for the attention.

How had he gotten here? Steve stopped in the middle of the floor, taking it all in. Wine spilled like blood over the shirtfront of one soldier, whose friend mirthfully dabbed at it with a napkin. Other soldiers shoved at one another, their grappling hands and hunkering shoulders all in. It felt like war in here and not like how it did in the dances that he had attended, where quiet, impending doom had clouded over the dancing couples. No, the air was electric with violence.

Steve had been at war, just a moment ago. He remembered, with some strain, a factory. The shield in his hand. The crooning of a mechanical voice. Several others had accompanied him, their faces and forms shadowy. He knew them well, yet not at all. And as he reached for the details of the woman, who stood closest to him…

“Are you ready for our dance?” Peggy asked, over his left shoulder.

The woman, along with the others, fled from his mind as he turned. He had been ready for so long. But when his eyes fell where Peggy should have stood, he found a man in her place.

Bucky, smiling as he used to. He cradled a tumbler of brandy in one of his hands and he had cropped his hair short so that Steve could see the full gray blue of his eyes.

The scene blinked. Steve now had one of his arms wrapped around Bucky’s waist, his right hand folded within Bucky’s left up in the air. The brandy had disappeared. They’re swaying to the music, not in exaggerated jest as they had once in front of the other cackling Howling Commandos in a London dance hall, but in earnest. Steve glanced around. 

No one spared them any mind, although the laughter grew to shrieks around them. The hall blurred and his head pounded, like he had a hangover. He winced and lowered his face into Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky nudged him with his jaw. 

“Your hand is cold,” Steve said. Ice against his skin.

Bucky shrugged and guided them faster. They cut clean through other pairs on the floor. They get so close to the band that the music vibrated throughout Steve’s skull, threatening to overcome him. Feeling the quaking in Bucky’s chest, he knew his friend could feel it too. Steve thought that they might overlap—their skin melding, bodies becoming one.

The scene blinked.

Steve blinked. His lifted his head.

Bucky blinked. His eyes were slathered with black grease. They gazed at Steve with emptiness.

“The song is over,” the Winter Soldier said, pulling back. The band had indeed gone silent—everything had gone silent except for the wind whistling through the space. The people nevermore, the tables overturned, broken wine glasses littering the floor. Steve held tight to his friend’s hand and the metal dug into his palm. “Let me go.”

“I can’t,” Steve said, as the Winter Soldier yanked him down. Even as he fell to his knees, he wouldn’t loosen his grasp on the arm. “Please. I need you, Bucky.”

“He’s dead, Captain Rogers,” said the Soldier, taking a long-bladed knife from his belt. As he sunk it into Steve’s chest, “Since 1943. You’re alone.”

***

Steve awoke back in Wakanda just as the tip of the knife pierced his heart.

***

He and Tony chopped firewood at Clint’s house later. The wood had the same sweet odor as the trees in 1942 Italy, where he had his last USO show. The work was far from hard, but every lift and fall of the axe tautened his muscles pleasurably. It’s enough to keep him from punching Tony in the face.

Especially when Tony said, “I don’t trust a guy without a dark side. Call me old-fashioned.”

Steve bit back a rude laugh, his left fingers twitching on the axe’s handle. “Let’s just say you haven’t seen him yet.”


End file.
